News & Race Reports

Round 13 arrived with unexpected company. A group of regulars from the Sentul International Karting Circuit crossed over to join the Gokart Avenue grid: Daffa Ardiansa, winner of this year's ESHARK Rok Cup Asia Round at Sentul; Kimi Rae, a well-known driver from Intrepid Indonesia / Neo Racing Team; Fabi from Team HDM; and others. It was a different kind of weekend — experienced outside competition on a circuit they'd never raced before.

Faith got through the quarter-finals and semi-finals cleanly, winning both. But the final was where the day got complicated. Six drivers made it through: Faith, Kenny Wibisono (the Jogja Kart regular), Athilla Babyshark, Shawn Hiro (DEWA United, Kart.inc Pro League programme), Fabi, and Daffa. Faith started on pole. A poor launch cost him the lead immediately — Kenny jumped him off the line, and Faith spent the first half of the race chasing him down. Then Daffa, starting from the back of the grid, carved through the field, caught Faith, and overtook him. He later passed Kenny too. Final result: Daffa P1, Kenny P2, Faith P3.

Round 14 was a clean reversal. The format used two heat races on a reverse-grid points system to determine the final grid. In Heat 1 Faith started 3rd and finished 1st. In the reverse-grid Heat 2 he started last (P6) and won again. He lined up P1 for the final and crossed the line P1 — a clean sweep to end the weekend.

Round 11 and 12 of the Gokart Avenue Senior SWS Sprint Cup finally went ahead on Friday, July 10th — a continuation of the season that had been on hold since Round 10 back in May. The rounds introduced a new race format: the field was split into two groups of 5–6 drivers, with Heat 1 grids set by prior qualifying and Heat 2 grids reversed off the Heat 1 results. Points from both heats carried over, with the top 3 point-scorers across both groups advancing to the final.

In Round 11, Faith started Heat 1 from the front and won it outright, then started Heat 2 from the back of the grid and recovered to P2. That combination gave him the most points of anyone in the field, earning him pole for the final — which he converted into the win, crossing the line ahead of Athila (2 seconds back) and Kenny Wibisono, a Jogja gokart racer, in P3 (4 seconds back).

Round 12 told a different story. Faith started Heat 1 in P2 behind Kenny Wibisono and came through to win it. In the reverse-grid Heat 2 he started dead last and fought back to P3. In the final, despite starting from pole, an underperforming kart limited him to P4 — his first finish outside the podium in the Gokart Avenue SWS Senior Sprint Cup since Round 2, back in February.

With Round 12 in the books, the SWS Indonesia National Rankings updated: Faith now sits #1 in the Gokart Avenue track rankings and 4th nationally. Still ambitious about closing the gap — first nationally by the end of the year is the target, and it's only a matter of time.

Backed by Gazpoll Karting Team, Faith became the first driver to win both races of an SWS Sprint Cup Senior round at Gokart Avenue back to back, taking Round 9 and Round 10 on the same day. The Round 10 final was the bigger statement: he crossed the line 13.911 seconds clear of second-placed Athila Babyshark — a gap that, on a short rental circuit, is closer to a different race than a close finish. Teammate El Jabbal, also racing under the Gazpoll banner, backed up the team's strong weekend with P3 in Round 9 and P2 in Round 10.

The following week he entered the Stockwise x Triv Gokart Championship, a 140-driver field organized by Gabriel Rey and Andry Hakim, and won it outright — beating pre-race favorite Chelsea Dian to the title.

Two teams changed their driver line-up right before the Kart.inc Pro League Season 1 Grand Final. WISH Motorsport's main and reserve Pro-Am drivers were both confirmed unavailable to race; the team promoted junior reserve Kimi James Suselo and brought Faith in as a new driver to complete the Pro-Am line-up for Fendy Yoman, who was unable to compete.

Faith and Kimi shared Pro-Am duties as teammates — Kimi already had one round of KPL experience, having started in Round 5. In qualifying, Faith set the quicker time of the two. Race 1, run from the lower bracket, didn't go to plan: starting P1, he spun and dropped to the back of the field. Race 2 went the other way — starting from the back, he worked through the field on clean laps to finish P2, climbing from last to second.

On the morning of May 4th, 2026 — the day after the GT World Challenge Asia: Mandalika round wrapped at Lombok's Pertamina Mandalika International Circuit — Faith got his first real taste of car racing. With the support of Gazpoll Karting Team, he was given the opportunity to test an ITCR 1200 (Indonesian Tour Car Race) machine: the Toyota Agya GR race car, a platform he's identified as his most likely next step once he's done with karts.

Two sessions in the morning. No prior experience driving a manual car. He came away with a time of 2:10.--- — a solid benchmark for a first outing, and a first real data point on what the jump from karts to cars actually feels like from behind the wheel.

Faith's first taste of the E-Sprint Cup — SWS's electric-kart category — came at Barcode Gokart, racing the SODI RSX across two rounds in a single day. Different machinery, different circuit, no prior reps in the category: both rounds still saw him push through to the upper bracket.

Round 7 finished 6th of 16, and Round 8 finished 7th of 13 — a solid first outing in a discipline he'd never raced before, made finishing in the top half all the more notable.

Backed by PLB (Prima Larvae Bali), Faith returned to Malaysia for the SWS Regional Asia 2026 — a 40-driver field with direct qualification to the Sodi World Finals on the line for the winner. Qualifying went well: strong lap times put him P6 on the grid for Heat 1.

The race itself was less kind. Chaos at the first hairpin on lap one pushed him back toward the rear of the field; he recovered to P14, but the kart lacked straight-line speed all weekend. The Super Heat brought a similar story — a strong recovery drive to P12, hampered again by a kart that couldn't find top end on the straights. He finished the event 23rd of 40.

Not every weekend goes to plan — this one was a lesson in working with what the equipment gives you on the day.

Alongside racing, Faith now works as an assistant coach at Gokart Avenue under head coach Heru Dwi Jatmiko, a former national champion in both Rotax and shifter kart categories in Indonesia. The role has put him on the other side of race craft — breaking down lines, braking points, and race strategy for newer drivers.

It's also the early groundwork for his next step: Faith is currently preparing to move into shifter karts, training under Heru's guidance as he builds toward racing the category directly.

Gokart Avenue's team needed a fourth driver to fill out their line-up for SWS Endurance Round 2, a 4-hour race at the LYL International Karting Circuit in Malaysia — Faith's first international event. The existing line-up was Romy Tahrizi Amin (driving for both Dewa Motorsport and Toyota Garage Indonesia), Aldi Inyong (coach and head mechanic at Gokart Avenue, and a former Formula Student and Sentul racer), and Heru Dwi Jatmiko, Faith's coach and an ex-national Rotax/shifter champion. Romy, as team lead, was initially reluctant to bring in an untested rookie — Faith only made the line-up after Heru vouched strongly on his behalf.

The weekend was wet from the start. Faith was sent out first to scout the conditions and set the pace in qualifying. From there it was a true team effort: Romy took the start, handed over to Aldi, who handed to Heru, who handed back to Romy — before Faith returned for the final stint and brought the car home in P4. A post-race penalty for the team ahead promoted Gokart Avenue Indonesia to P3 — Faith's first international podium.

Round 1 of the 2025 SWS Sprint Cup Senior category marked Faith's debut in SWS sprint racing — and the field was stacked. The final grid included Jakarta regular Ananda Julio Prost (who won the round), Hadrian Wivan — a pro racer heavily affiliated with and a regular at Barcode Gokart, who would go on to race the Sodi E-SWS Finals 2026 — and Jefanka Jerry, who would later become Wivan's teammate in the F4 Academy Indonesia program at KPL. Also in the final were Dhanaswara Evan and Kenny Wibisono, both out of the Jogja Gokart scene — Evan went on to race the Sodi SWS Finals in both 2025 and 2026.

Faith's coach hadn't expected him to make the final at all — the grid was packed with some of the strongest names in Indonesian rental karting. He qualified through anyway. In the final, he jumped from P6 to P3 in the first two corners off the start — but the race was red-flagged and restarted. On the second start, a hard defend further back in the pack saw him pushed and spun by Jerry. He recovered to finish the round in P6.

Faith's first time in a kart was at Speedy Karting, Kuningan City. He entered his first real competition there on the 17th of August independence-day race, finishing 5th overall as a runner-up finalist in the Best Time category — a respectable start for a first-ever race.

A couple of months later, he raced BSD Xtreme Park's Gokart Race Vol. 6 and took 3rd place. By December, racing in the Rookie category at the Gokart Avenue 2024 Cup, he won outright — his first 1st-place finish.

His SWS debut followed soon after, racing the SWS Endurance Cup at Gokart Avenue. He finished 4th — ahead of a team featuring Kimi Rae, a well-known driver out of the Sentul scene.